But were the uphill not supposed to end in Moncenisio?
Up and down, with two tough uphill the first of 6, and the second of 8 kilometers … the first I took it right between midday and one when the heat was at its maximum … I would have dived in one of the many lakes I met today …
Today I clearly perceived one of the big differences there are between cycling here and in Africa, the absence of people on the road, in Africa, apart from the desert, the road aggregates people chat, play, work, cheer the musungu passing on that strange bicycle … here on the road there are no people … and if it is true that at the end of Ethiopia I would have liked a bigger privacy … it is also true that here it seems to me to be busy in a closed door time race … to make the exception some drivers and children who wave greatly from the windows … in Africa almost every day somebody would stop, get off the car, ask me information, and take a picture on the mobile …
In a town which name I do not remember, probably Oyonnax, exhausted from a uphill and the heat, I through myself in a food stuff shop and I took from the fridge a big can containing a supplement drink with taurine, vitamins and caffeine … then when I had already almost finished it I remembered to greet the owner, who was laughing with curiosity about the bicycle and I think my behavior … he asked me about the journey, the countries, and he told me I should have passed in Turkey too his home country … he told the daughter to take a picture of us on the Iphone and wanted my contact on facebook … when it was time to pay he refused and offered me the drink …
Ten kilometers later Faith Sahbazer asked me to be friends on facebook, there is something at a social relations level, curiosity, hospitality and openness that in the West we have lost … it makes me laugh that a waitress after Pont de la Pyle … who after I took a can of coke out of the fridge and I was drinking it at rocket speed stopped me several times because she wanted to be paid immediately … she was scared I was going to run away …
Today a bit of adverse wind, which together with the scanty dinner of yesterday and the uphill made me in crisis almost from the start … by now I keep up as far as the kilometers are concerned … but from the exertion I am still not immune … and I will never be probably … getting close to Lons le Sauniers I saw the landscape flattening hopefully tomorrow the uphill will give way to the flat …
Today I also had two interviews one from Marco Pastonesi from Gazzetta, and the other from Luca di Falco from Prealpina … Marco asked me where I was as I was talking … I think he was expecting a picturesque description … on the Pont de la Pyle … ‘I am enjoying the view of this emerald green water that only the mountain lakes have’ … instead I was in the parking lot of a Lidl Discount … already when I had done the Barcelona – Legnano passing through the Pyrenees I had noticed the comfortable location of these discounts … on main roads … with few customers, water, juices, yoghurt and drinkable drinks … they are a sad but effective solution for the cyclist …
I am on a small hotel in the historic centre all developed in height where breakfast starts at 6,30 after the 8 of the last two it is an unmissable occasion to start off early and shorten the distance which still separates me from London … because many say by now you have arrived … but the remaining 780 kilometers have to be pedaled in any case … on my legs!
Annecy N 45° 89.924’ E 6° 12.938’ – Lons le Sauniers N 46° 67.353’ E 5° 55.492’ 149 km